Staff

In 2011, 140 person-years were completed, which is 18.3 person-years less than in the previous year. The main change occurred in the basic funding: in 2010, 92.2 person-years were completed on basic funding, while this number decreased to 77.0 person-years in 2011. This is due to the fact that the basic funding of the department was decreased considerably in 2010, and after that, mainly substitutes, as well as reinforcements for the new professorships in accordance with the staff plan, have been employed as new recruits on basic funding. In 2011, the amount of person-years completed on external funding was 63.0. When analysing the person-years on the scale of the 4-level teaching and research staff structure, we can see that the largest change compared to year 2010 occurred at the 1st level (research assistants and doctoral students).

In autumn 2011, some significant recruitment processes were established at the department, such as the first call for applications for a tenure-track professorship. These recruitments will be displayed in the basic-funding person-year statistics of year 2012.

In 2011, the average age of the department staff was 35.8. During the past five years, the average age has varied between 33.3 and 36.4.

The internationalisation process of the department is evident in the staff statistics. In 2011, employees from abroad completed 21.4% of the person-years at the department. Of the staff working at the department in 2011, 23.0% were foreigners.

Funding

The total funding of the department was 10.4 Million Euros. The total funding was reduced by some 0.5 Million compared to year 2010. As in previous years, the funding mainly went towards salaries and facilities.

As in previous years, the financial situation was improved considerably by external funding, i.e. fixed-term funding (Finnish Academy centre-of-excellence funding, funding for centre of excellence in university teaching, and the extra funding received for research evaluation). This extra funding will end in 2012.

The external funding has been around 4 Million Euros per annum in the past five years. In 2011, the funding from the Finnish Academy increased the most. The increase is partially explained by the problems the university had with invoicing the Finnish Academy at the end of year 2010, so that the invoicing was put into effect in 2011 instead of 2010.

External funding is important to the department, and it is also evidence of our success in a hardening competition. Having such a large part of the total funding depending on external backers, however, makes for added insecurity, especially when making long-term plans for the department.

The changes resulting from the new university legislation of year 2010, deployment of new information systems, and constant changes to reporting routines are factors that make long-term planning of the finances, keeping statistics, and monitoring projects on external funding very difficult on the department level.

Teaching

In 2011, less resources were used in teaching than before, as the amount of part-time teaching was cut back considerably. Except for the part-time teaching, the number of instructors and classes remained at the same level as previous years. Studies were completed at an excellent pace, as the accumulation of credits in relation to the number of person-years is outstanding. The result of year 2011, 665 credits per person-year, is a record for the department.

Following the pattern of previous years, the number of BSc degrees is much larger than MSc degrees, though we can see a slight increase in MSc degrees, as well. In this two-stage degree system, the clear division between BSc and MSc degrees emphasises the significance of the BSc degree as an independent degree.

Research

The focal areas for research at the department during the current strategy period 2010-12 are data analysis, data networks and services, and software research. During year 2011, the research in all the department’s focal areas was still very actively described in writing. Jaakko Kurhila, Samuel Kaski (HIIT), Samu Varjonen, and Arto Vihavainen received awards for best conference paper this year, and Wilhelmiina Hämäläinen received the award for best doctoral dissertation from the Finnish Information Processing Association. In 2011, the researchers at the department produced 143 refereed publications and a total of 186 publications.

In 2010, a new research database system, Tuhat, was implemented at the university. In addition to their publications, researchers also enter other activities (awards, visits, editorial work, conference participation and organisation, memberships in committees, thesis supervision including doctoral theses, and public appearances in different forums) into the Tuhat system. At the beginning of 2011, old publication data was also transferred into the Tuhat system from the old JULKI publication system. The information in Tuhat was utilised for the gathering of information for the evaluation of research and postgraduate education at the university (2010-2012), which served as an incentive for researchers to keep their Tuhat data up to date. The final results of the evaluation will be published at the beginning of May 2012, but according to preliminary information, the department has done well in the evaluation.

In June 2011, the Academy of Finland selected new centres of excellence in its national programme for years 2012-2017. These new centres of excellence include the CoE of computational inference in Finland COIN, the CoE of research into cancer genetics, and the CoE of inverse problems; researchers from the department are members of each of these CoEs. Petri Myllymäki and his team participate in the COIN unit, Veli Mäkinen and his team in the cancer genetics group, and Aapo Hyvärinen in the inverse-problem group. From before, the department unit for algorithmic data analysis (Algodan), headed by Professor Esko Ukkonen, has been a part of this centre-of-excellence programme during the years 2008-2013.